Monday, April 27, 2009

Some quests I agree could use a little more detail in the description as to where to find things.

However, in this day and age where everyone (well, except me) uses a multitude of addons such as Quest Helper and Cartographer to help play the game... I think some people may have lost their common sense from underuse.

This example actually amused me, but I've been in guilds before (lowbie levelling guilds that randomly invite anyone, usually) where someone needs help to find stuff for every single quest... and it can really get quite annoying.

Seriously, people - not only does that quest tell you exactly where in Westfall you can find the quest item in the quest text (a house in western Moonbrook), the frickin' quest TITLE tells you where to go.

Read the quest text, stop using so many mods, and you never know - you might even find yourself having fun hunting down Mankrik's wife all by yourself!

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Recently, I opened my Oracle egg while waiting for a raid to start. "Eh, another whelp," I thought, promptly mailing it to a bank alt.

A guildie, observing my prize (he was in the raid, so he saw the loot pop up), asked me if it was from the new fishing daily.

I said no, it was from the egg... and then blithely linked the pet I *did* get from the fishing daily, a Strand Crawler I'd picked up on the second day.

His next whisper - something along the lines of "maybe for YOU..." (made in good humour) - made me rethink my initial thought.

These pets are rare.

I assuaged him by saying the usual - I've been buying the eggs for quite awhile, it's not as lucky as Guildie1 who got the Baron's mount on his first run, or Guildcasual2 who doesn't log on for months and ends up with not one, but TWOgreen protodrake mounts.

However, I have to admit - I *am* pretty lucky... mostly with things that I'm not thinking about. This year alone, I've:

fished up a pet rat within 10min while waiting for a PuG raid to fill up

gone past the Forlorn Cavern in Ironforge waiting for the Adored debuff from the "Love is in the Air" event to drop off, impulsively equipped my fishing pole, cast once and pulled up Old Ironjaw

failed to get my own green protodrake mount, but in the process picked up 3 drake minipets (worth at least a hundred gold each in the AH).

(on my flat-broke, mountless 55 Horde druid on Frostmourne) looked for cheap recipes that might help me level jewelcrafting faster, picked up the Savory Deviate Delight recipe for less than 2 gold and sold it for a few hundred - enough of a profit to pay for Glyphs and level 30 mounts for both my druid and mage (32), plus a start on the level 60 mount.

downed 10man Malygos for the first time in a PuG, and picked up Black Ice

Not bad at all... Maybe I should start not thinking about getting loot more often!

Friday, April 17, 2009

Nothing makes you feel more like a hunter than getting a new pet... and with Seismic the gorilla able to be retired due to the Thunderstomp change in patch 3.1, the free stable slot had me more excited than I'd expected.

She's my first female companion (no, don't ask how I can tell if she's female. Irrelevant!), and very pretty - I couldn't possibly go past taming this "wolf" instead of the more popular (and theoretically, higher-DPS) devilsaur.

Shadow the cat will of course continue to be my battlegrounds partner - he and I have spent numerous hours stealthed at nodes together - and my backup pet for absolutely everything.

The only downside to getting the new pet is, naturally, the levelling - I have 5 levels to get over the weekend before Sunday night's raid, and I don't know if I'll make it. If all else fails, I'll have to get Shadow to stand in; I'd probably take Fury to Naxx as a sub-80, but not Ulduar!

Friday, April 3, 2009

(Ignore my armour in the screenshot... I forgot to take a pic last night and this one is old - Eyeball helm, ZA shoulders and Prince bow FTW)

I and 2 guildies had decided we'd take on the AQ40 trash before Skeram for bug mounts.

Only.... I thought I'd ask in guild for more helpers, thinking hey, why not try some bosses, not thinking I'd get any replies.

Awhile later I found myself leading - and main tanking with my gorilla Seismic - an impromptu raid through AQ40 with what seemed to me like way too few people for what we were attempting (9 at this point), particularly when I recognized the doorway to the room of the TwinEmps.

The first attempt was as bad as I'd expected - the Twins healed constantly, and I called a wipe after it was clear we weren't going to get anywhere.

However, I'd discovered something important while pet tanking that I hadn't picked up when I'd DPSed my way through the encounter in PuGs previously - Seismic could pick up and hold aggro on BOTH Twins, at least long enough for the casters to hightail it across the room after a swap. Repositioning the physical Twin was also far easier than I expected.

The second attempt, despite only having 9 raiders, some of which were unfamiliar with the fight (including the other tanks) and not all of them being 80.... we killed them.

Unfortunately, we didn't seem to have quite enough DPS (or mental capacity, since it was 1am by this time) to down C'thun - we were overwhelmed by tentacles and Dark Glare caught a few unawares - but I've been in 40man PuGs where most people were 80 and wiped on Twin Emps; to lead a successful raid of 9 is pretty epic.

Hopefully on the weekend I'll get a raid to finish C'thun and the optional bosses - not only am I getting decent Brood rep, I'm finding it very satisfying to lead my guildies through content that, while outdated, is still technically difficult (particularly if you haven't seen it before).

About

Hunters Rhok comes to you from the mind of Phyllixia, a hunter in Blizzard's World of Warcraft. The name of the blog originates from a catchphrase invented at a time when only the most skilled hunters could obtain Rhok'delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers:"Hunters don't just rock, we RHOK!"